


If You Can't Say Anything Nice

by justheretobreakthings



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bullying, But not nearly as much as James, Gen, James is a punk ass bitch, Lance is kind of a jerk in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 19:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17668709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justheretobreakthings/pseuds/justheretobreakthings
Summary: When Lance needs to blow off some steam after a frustrating morning with Keith, he finds himself with an unexpected and very indulging confidant.





	If You Can't Say Anything Nice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SilenceIsGolden15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilenceIsGolden15/gifts).



“Oh, good, you guys are here,” Lance said as he entered the Garrison rec room and plopped down onto the couch. Hunk, in the corner of the couch opposite him, looked up from the book he was reading, while Pidge, sitting crossed-legged on the floor next to him with earbuds plugged into the laptop balanced on her knees, tilted her head back to look at him upside-down. “You would not believe the morning I’ve had,” Lance sighed.

“What happened?” Hunk asked.

“Okay, so, you know how Keith and I agreed to do that school visit with Red and Black today?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, leave it to Mullet to go and decide to make a mess of the thing. How hard can it possibly be to - ?”

“Here we go,” Pidge muttered, rolling her eyes and removing her earbuds.

Lance raised a brow and turned to her. “I’m sorry? What do you mean ‘here we go’?”

“I mean, here we go, it’s time for our daily helping of Lance-whining-about-Keith.”

Lance bristled. “I do not  _whine!”_

“Call it what you like,” Pidge said with a shrug. “But let’s face the facts - you do complain about him a lot.”

“I don’t complain about him that much! Hunk, back me up here.”

Hunk offered him a sheepish shrug. “Well, she’s got a point…”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine, I complain about him. But only because he gives me so much to complain about!”

“Uh-huh,” Pidge said. “So what pissed you off today? What’d Keith do? Was it something about his hair? His attitude? Way he dresses? Did he not laugh at one of your jokes, Lance? Do you need a hug, would that make it all better?”

Lance scowled and crossed his arms. “You know what? Friends _listen_  to friends who need to vent.”

“Oh, I’m listening,” Pidge said. She put her headphones back in and turned the volume of her music up so loudly that Lance could hear it where he was standing. “Go on, I’m all ears.”

His scowl deepening, Lance flipped her off and turned to Hunk. Just as he was opening up his mouth to speak, Hunk cut him off by saying, “Actually, Lance, I’m at a really good part in this book, so, um, I don’t think I can spare the time to listen to a Keith Rant right now…”

“First of all, let’s not start calling them ‘Keith Rants’ like they’re an official thing, I’m just letting off steam. Second of all, fine, if my  _friends_  don’t want to hear about my day, I’ll just head to lunch and vent to my mashed potatoes. Thanks for nothing.”

“You’re welcome,” Hunk said, lifting his book and returning his attention to it. Pidge didn’t so much as glance in his direction. With a sigh, Lance left the room and made his way to the cafeteria, grumbling under his breath as he went.

He left off his grumbling as he made it to the Garrison cafeteria, and kept quiet long enough to get a tray filled and find a seat at an empty table before he resumed, muttering to himself as he stabbed at his pineapple chunks.

“Um,” a voice interrupted him a minute in, and he looked up to see James Griffin standing across from him is his orange uniform, raising a brow at him. “Do you mind if I sit here, or are you already chatting with someone?”

“Go ahead,” Lance said, gesturing with his fork to the seat across from him, which James sank into. “Sorry ‘bout that, just been a long morning.”

“How so?” James asked.

“Had that school visit with Keith today. Don’t know whose idea it was to schedule just us for it, but I swear, I’m never doing a presentation with Keith again.”

“What happened?”

“Well,” Lance said, “We both had to memorize parts for the first half of the presentation, and that went fine. But then we had this Q-and-A portion, and it was like Keith just completely forgot how to do public speaking. The man cannot string two words together if he doesn’t rehearse them beforehand, so I wound up pretty much having to do that whole portion on my own. Then we’re introducing the kids to the lions, showing them around, and I’m starting to think Keith has never even interacted with a child before, because he is absolute shit at it. Plus he flat out  _scared_  one kid; little guy jumps up for a surprise piggyback ride on him and Keith knocks him off and snarls at him like he’s gonna eat him.”

He paused to take a bite of his lunch before continuing. “Whole thing was just… gah. He saddles me with most of the work, and then proceeds to make both of us look bad in front of the kids. I swear, Keith should not be allowed to do any press events ever.”

“Hey, I hear you,” James said through a bite of his own sandwich. “We’ve all seen the press photos. I’ve yet to see one where Kogane doesn’t look like he wants to beat up whoever’s manning the camera.”

Lance let out a laugh. “I know, right? Like, seriously, would it kill him to learn to take a decent photo? Designated leader of Voltron, and yet he’s the paladin who’s worst at making a first impression.”

“So, he’s like, the official ‘leader’ of the group, right?” James asked. “Thought I’d seen a press release say that but…”

“Technically, yeah,” Lance sighed. “Basically, the person who pilots the Black Lion gets to call the shots in battle. Although, full disclosure, for most things Shiro and Allura’s words are above Keith’s. And Keith’s never really been the kind of person you think of when the phrase ‘born leader’ comes to mind or anything. He’s as likely to go running off on his own as he is to actually do his ‘leader’ job.”

“Honestly, doesn’t sound like he’s changed all that much since the Garrison,” James said. “Remember the sorts of things he would do during sims?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Lance groaned. “Pretty sure we all did three times as many drills as any other class in the history of the Garrison on account of Keith’s dumb stunts.”

“He didn’t get better in fighter class, you know,” James said. “‘Star student’ or not, no one wanted to work with him. I was friends with the guy they had assigned to be Kogane’s comm spec the first year of fighter training, and apparently he and the group’s engineer wound up  _begging_  to get assigned a different pilot, he was so annoying. Wouldn’t talk with them, wouldn’t listen to them. I don’t know how you managed to spend all that time stuck out in space with him.”

“Believe me, it wasn’t easy,” Lance said with a little grin. “The guy’s no fun at all. Whenever the whole group’s together, he spends the whole time just sulking in a corner, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard him laugh. Even when he  _gets_  the joke; sometimes he will actually just straight-up turn to Pidge or Shiro and have them explain punchlines to him. You can’t hold a conversation with him.”

“Well, hey, don’t be so quick to knock that,” James said. “There’s advantages to him not getting jokes. Some of us in fighter class would have this sort of game where we’d talk to him in euphemisms and references and keep score of how often Kogane would catch on when we insulted him, and how often it just went over his head. Dude was batting, like, a fifty. It was honestly kinda sad.”

Lance laughed. This was… nice. It was nice to get some Keith-related gripes out of his system. Hunk didn’t let him vent about Keith the way he used to - and Lance had never figured out the reason for the change - Pidge never paid any attention to him when he did, and God forbid he ever try to air any of it to Shiro. The former Black Paladin seemed reluctant to believe that Keith was anything short of perfect in spite of any evidence to the contrary. “I gotta tell you, it’s a breath of fresh air,” he said. “Didn’t know he got under everyone else’s skin too. I had started thinking I was the only one at the Garrison who didn’t worship the ground Keith walked on.”

“Oh, there were people like that,” James said with a shrug. “But that’s only because they only knew Kogane as the master pilot, not the warts-and-all version we got. The people who thought he was role model material didn’t see the way he’d lose his mind if someone in the room would click their pen too much, or the fact that he won’t use a urinal if anyone else is in the restroom, or, God, the fact that he would fucking sing to himself in the cockpit if he didn’t think anyone was listening.”

“He still does that!” Lance cried in delight. “The singing thing! We’ve caught him at it a couple of times. Pidge managed to get a recording of him once, singing this, like, theme song he made up for the lions or something. I don’t think he knows the recording even exists.”

“Lance,” James said. “Lance, you have  _got_  to send that to me. I haven’t had a decent ringtone in so long. God, I had a couple videos saved of him back during the Garrison days that I’d totally trade you for, but that was, like, two phones ago.”

“Well, hey, there’s no shortage where that came from,” Lance said. “Keep an eye on him long enough, he’s bound to do something worth recording. I’m gonna have to see what’s on his vlog at some point.”

“His vlog?”

“Coran had all of us film these little vlog things for ‘historical’ reasons, and Keith straight-up refuses to let anyone watch his. Must have wound up recording something pretty damn embarrassing, but who knows what it was.”

“If you ever get hold of that footage, send it my way. You gonna eat that coleslaw?” James asked, pointing to Lance’s tray.

“Have at it,” Lance said, sliding the cup over. “You realize, of course, that now you’re really starting to rack up a bill for how much you owe me.”

“Oh, I’ll figure out a way to pay it,” James said as he began digging into the coleslaw. “You want me to mess with Keith for you? There’s always a stock of old standbys from the Garrison, but I can come up with more sophisticated stuff.”

“Old standbys?” Lance asked, raising a brow. “What do you mean?”

“You know, just little pranks the other people in fighter class would pull on him sometimes. Old school teenager things. Grease on his gearshift, put old food in his bag, piss in his shampoo. Stupid stuff like that.”

Lance wrinkled his nose. “People did that?”

“Shampoo was his roommate’s doing,” James answered, “But I don’t think he ever even noticed that one.”

“Not surprising. You’ve seen his hair, I don’t think he gives two shits what he puts in it.”

“Fair point,” James said with a nod. “Give him a horseshoe mustache to complete the look and he could be living in a garage in the nineteen-eighties.”

“You know he doesn’t shave?” Lance said.

“Hm?”

“Yeah, he’s the only one of the paladins who didn’t keep a razor in our communal bathroom, and I figured maybe he kept it in his room and just carried it back and forth for some reason and shaved in private. But then he winds up on this, like, two-year-long camping trip with his mom, and comes back without so much as a single hair of stubble. He just flat out can’t grow facial hair.”

James let out a bark of laughter. “Oh my god. You think that’s why he grows that mullet thing of his out so long? ‘Cause he’s overcompensating?”

“Ha, it wouldn’t surprise me,” Lance said.

“Wow. And, shit, you’d think with his mom being what she is, he’d have wound up covered in the stuff. Guess it’s not genetic. He oughta be relieved; his dad goes and fucks a goddamn Hibagon, what came out could have been a total furry mess.”

Lance’s smirk faltered a little on that remark. “Okay, let’s, ah – let’s not bring Krolia into anything, she’s – ”

“Oh, Keith still hung up on his mommy issues?” James asked. He set aside his coleslaw and leaned his chair back onto two legs, crossing his arms behind his head and kicking his feet up to table’s surface. “God, he was always so nuts about anything to do with his parents back at the Garrison. Anyone just mentioning them would set him off. I mean, I guess I can understand why, now. I’d probably have mommy issues too if mine was a fucking  _alien,_  but it got annoying as hell back at school. Not like he was the only kid in the school who had issues with their parents, he’s just the only one who had such thin skin about it.”

“James,” Lance said, frowning at him. “Seriously, could we talk about something else?”

James turned to him with a raised brow, then brought his feet back down to the floor to sit upright. “Shit, dude, relax. I don’t have anything against Krolia. Just, you know, what came out of her.”

“It’s just, you know. That’s… I think that’s still kind of a sore spot.”

“And? What, is Keith in the room? Is your lunch bugged? We’re just chatting, Lance.”

“Yeah, but - ”

“Okay, okay,” James said, lifting his hands in mock surrender. “Dropping the subject. You know the new-and-improved half-Galra Keith better than I do anyhow, I guess. Still got no shortage of him back when he was still all human, though. I could fill a book.”

“… I’ll admit, I’d probably read it.”

“It’d be a page-turner, let me tell you. I mean, sure, a couple of the Garrison stories I’ve got for him were more other people setting things off, but mostly he’d just do his own stupid stuff, we just all got to bear witness. And it sure as hell isn’t like I’m the only one who was sick of him back then, there were plenty of other people whose skin he got under. Pretty much everyone he was partnered with in classes, his crew, whoever made that poster when flight classes were assigned - ”

The corners of Lance’s mouth quirked upward; he was pretty sure he knew what this story was going to be. “The poster,” he repeated.

“Yeah, in the hall for the fighter pilots’ hangar entrances, you know how they had that poster with, ah, whatshisname, the one Garrison alum, that had that, like, ‘Ten Tips for Fighter Pilots’ with those little inspirational quotes? Well, someone went and replaced it with a poster of Kogane, had it saying ‘Ten Tips for Getting into Fighter Class’ and it was, um, hang on… ‘Number one: develop a superiority complex. Number two: punch out the competition. Number three:’, uh…”

“‘Number three: you’re too special to play by the rules’,” Lance finished for him. “‘Number four: prepare to suck massive quantities of commanding officer dicks.’”

“So you remember it!” James cried. “I thought you might, that photo of the poster was going around for weeks after.”

“‘Course I remember it, I helped co-write it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nah, me and a couple of the others who wound up in cargo class. We were pissed, thought we would have a laugh. One of the others printed it up and hung it, I just helped with the concept. And the guy who printed it was the only one who got a suspension for it, so as far as anyone else knows, I’m one hundred percent innocent. So you didn’t hear this from me.”

“You have my word,” James said with a grin, putting his hand over his heart. “That was a classic, man. Guy who was rooming with Kogane that semester told us he straight up cried himself to sleep the night after that thing went up.”

Lance felt his own smile begin to falter. “He - ”

“He also basically vanished for the weekend after. Turned out he just run off and hid at Shirogane’s place for a couple days, but a bunch of us thought he had flat-out dropped out of the Garrison on account of that whole deal. Imagine everyone’s disappointment when he showed up again.”

“… Oh.” Lance stared down at his tray. He hadn’t known that. He had never meant to make Keith  _cry,_  even back then. None of them had. They’d only been trying to embarrass him a little, blow off some steam.

“Hey, it’s nothing to feel bad about,” James said, and Lance looked back up to see the other looking at him in concern. The twinge of guilt must have made its way into his expression. “Not the first time Kogane ran off crying just ‘cause someone was having a little fun with him. Wouldn’t stop him from completely blowing a fuse if someone spotted him melting down. He plays the victim card, but gets mad when people see him playing it. Try and figure  _that_  one out.”

“I mean, um, it’s - it’s possible he wasn’t ‘playing the victim card’, he was just… being upset…”

“We talking about the same Kogane? I’m pretty sure the only two emotions he’s capable of are boredom and rage.”

Lance swallowed as he looked down at his tray. The only food still on it was a brownie that he had saved for last, but suddenly it was looking rather unappetizing. In fact, everything he had eaten was suddenly not sitting well in his stomach. No, Keith was capable of more emotions than that, as much as Lance sometimes managed to convince himself otherwise; he’d seen them in action. And, apparently, been the cause of them before.

And God, this was just supposed to be him letting off some steam, but maybe…

He’d gone a bit too far, hadn’t he.

“Let’s… let’s drop this, okay?” he mumbled.

“All right, fine. Hey, another fun fact: are you aware that Keith used to - ”

“No, James, I meant - let’s  _drop_  this. This - this is mean.”

James frowned at him, quirking a brow. “What?”

“I, uh, I was mad at him today, sure, but - but I shouldn’t have said - ”

“Okay, whoa, what is with you all of a sudden? We were having fun a few minutes ago, then you start getting quiet on me, and now out of the blue it’s all, ‘thou shalt never speak ill of thy neighbor’?”

“It - I wasn’t thinking, I hadn’t thought - this was mean. We’re being mean.”

“Oh, so now I’m ‘mean’? Where is this coming from?”

“James - ”

“Maybe it’s nice to take the little freak down a peg, you know?” James snapped. “Seriously, it’s not like I’m bursting into his room and attacking him or anything, we’re just chatting. Considering how he went out of his way to make life so difficult for me back at the Garrison, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with ragging on him a bit.”

Lance tilted his head. “Wait, what do you mean? Are you talking about that time he punched you?”

“That too, but also the fact that he would just be an ass to me at every opportunity,” James answered with a shrug. “You know the way he was, always acting like everyone else in the school was unworthy to speak to him and crap? Always gotta be better than everyone else? And he seemed to have it out for me in particular. Spent all his time glaring at me and trying to find excuses to get into fights. And he just could not stomach the thought of me being better than him in anything, so in every single class, no matter what I did, he always just had to one-up me, you know? Like, God forbid I ever surpass him in anything, in any way. Then the profs would started praising him because apparently they just love show-offs, and he’d get all smug and just refuse to acknowledge anyone else’s existence for the rest of class.”

He yawned and stretched his arms up behind his head before he added, “See, you weren’t in the fighter class yet, so you probably didn’t know what the dynamics were among the pilots or anything, so you may not be aware of this, but all through school, Keith Kogane was, like, my rival.”

Lance stared at him. “Your… what?”

“My rival,” James repeated. “You know, Kogane and Griffin, always neck-in-neck, fighting for top of the class. And he’d get pissed every time I’d beat him, get smug and look down his nose at me every time he’d beat me. He was a nightmare.”

“He was… your rival.”

“Yeah. You may have been stuck with him out in space, but you never had to deal with quite the same side of him I did. Count yourself lucky.”

For a long and quiet moment, Lance stared down at his empty tray, feeling like he had just swallowed concrete. Then, without warning, he stood up, sending his chair back with a screech.

“Where you going?” James asked.

“I need to talk to Keith,” Lance said.

“What? Oh my God, are you serious?”

“Yeah, I’m serious. I - I have to apologize.”

“Dude, that shit was years ago. It’s all water under the bridge now.”

Lance shook his head. “No, no, it’s - I hadn’t realized I was so - I’ve gotta make this right.  _We_  ought to make this right, really.”

James rolled his eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve both fought beside him in battle. We’ve both worked on a team and saved his skin. I’m pretty sure that counts as ‘making things right’.”

“Whatever. I’m gonna talk to him.”

James shrugged. “Fine, on your own head be it, then. Are you gonna eat your brownie, by the way?” he asked, reaching for it.

Lance snatched up the tray with a grunt of, “Yes,” before James could grab the brownie, and he moved to dump all the remaining contents of the tray into the nearby garbage can before setting his tray on top and marching out of the cafeteria.

His thoughts were too muddied to allow him to pay much attention to his route as he walked to Keith’s room, and before he knew it, he found himself knocking on the door. A bark answered his knock, and when the door opened, Kosmo’s snout made its way out of the room first, eagerly sniffing the air before Keith pushed it back and took his place in the doorway.

“Lance?” Keith asked. “What is it?”

“Um… hey,” Lance answered, only just now realizing that in his haste to get here, he hadn’t actually planned on anything to say.

Keith sighed. “If you’re here about the school thing this morning, you already made your thoughts perfectly clear on the ride back, so could you - ”

“No, that’s not - I wanted to - I just - I wanted to say sorry.”

Keith raised a brow. “For this morning?”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “I mean, I shouldn’t have gotten so frustrated with you, and I’m sorry. Yeah, you kinda screwed some stuff up, but I made it worse than it needed to be, so… sorry.”

“Um, thanks?”

“And, I mean, I hadn’t realized that I was, like, being mean about it, I thought I just - well, you seemed like you were being a bit of a dick too, so I was just kind of trying to be a dick back, but maybe you weren’t actually being a dick, you were just being you, and - not saying that ‘just you’ is a dick, just that that was the impression, see - and I shouldn’t have - I mean, I’ve said some really dickish stuff to you, and apparently so have other people, and you - I shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have had to deal with all that. I hadn’t realized… I over-dicked, I guess, is what I’m saying, and I’m sorry about that, and that was mean, and I - and I’m gonna be less of a dick, going forward, I swear I am.”

Keith stared at him, eyes blown wide. “Uh…” he said. “That’s… uh…”

“Right, sorry, that was, that was a lot, just now, kinda - kinda piled on there.” Lance cleared his throat. “But, um… sorry. For this morning. And for - for other stuff.”

“Oh.”

“I, uh, I just want to…” He took a breath. “Hey, um, if you want, I could give you a hand with this press stuff. Like, what to do in Q-and-A sessions, stuff like that. I figure, you know, ‘stead of just complaining about how you do it, I could… help?”

Keith frowned. “I dunno, Lance…”

“I mean, you don’t have to, I get it, I haven’t exactly been - been such a good - just, you know, the offer’s there, if you want it. And, um, sorry.”

“Right, you said that. Well… thanks. For the offer.”

“Yeah. You’re welcome.”

The two boys stood in uncertain silence before Keith slid back into his room, shutting the door behind him, and Lance let out a breath of tension. That hadn’t really been a moment of closure or revelation or anything.

Still… they had years’ worth of fences to mend. And Lance had apologized, and had left an open door, and next time he’d just have to try harder. Be patient with Keith. Put the shit behind him. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Baby steps, Lance told himself as he walked away from Keith’s room. Baby steps.


End file.
